In modern manufacturing, such as manufacturing computers or other complex systems, the party controlling the process, often referred to as the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) procures individual components, subsystems such as disk drive controller or systems such as a general purpose computer from a number of suppliers.
It is evident that the OEM must have some way of tracking the systems being manufactured and the components, subsystems, etc. that are to be assembled to form the products, so that the OEM knows that sufficient components are on hand or on order to complete the products being ordered by the agreed shipping date. Such systems are generally referred to as manufacturing floor control systems.
In parallel, there has been work done on tracking the quality of components, subsystems, etc. supplied by the various suppliers. Two common types of analysis are failure analysis (FA), which concentrates on the cause of the failure of a component and disposition trend analysis (DTA), which emphasizes changes over time. Causes of failure may include not meeting specifications when shipped (because of a manufacturing defect), damage during assembly, design failures (the component was assembled correctly, but does not perform as intended), etc. Changes in time may result from untrained operators, change in supplier, etc.
The art could benefit from a system that builds on an existing manufacturing floor control system and permits analysis of failure causes.